


Shepard Memorial Plaza

by paxveraque



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-01
Updated: 2017-08-01
Packaged: 2018-12-09 22:16:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11678178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paxveraque/pseuds/paxveraque
Summary: When Shepard dies--the first time--her mother insists on a memorial. Her daughter is a war hero, twice over, and it is the least the Alliance can do for the widow who has lost her entire family to the cause.





	Shepard Memorial Plaza

When Shepard dies--the first time--her mother insists on a memorial. Her daughter is a war hero, twice over, and it is the least the Alliance can do for the widow who has lost her entire family to the cause.    

For months, Hannah obsesses over the details. When the demands of the intelligence service allow, she consults with sculptors and landscape architects. She turns down her promotion to Admiral, which would only serve as a distraction. She channels all of her grief--and her guilt--into the project.

It takes almost a year, but in the end, she plans every inch of the two city blocks that become Shepard Memorial Plaza. Not a single flower is planted without her approval.  

Two hundred thousand people flock to Elysium’s capital city the weekend of the memorial’s unveiling. Many are survivors of the Skyllian Blitz--civilians or soldiers whose lives were saved when her daughter organized the resistance. Hannah hugs everyone who offers and guides them to the Great Library of Illyria on the northern border, the site of her daughter’s final defense of the colony. She watches as they climb the stairs of the colossal marble palace to lay flowers and notes at the feet of the bronze statue at the top--a single marine, weapon at high ready, taking her last stand to protect those behind the library’s door.    

Many more are survivors of the Battle of the Citadel--Council citizens of every race who have come to pay their final respects. Hannah shakes as many hands as she can manage and politely accepts their quiet condolences. She invites them to enjoy their day in the plaza, to read in the shade of the sturdy magnolia trees, and to picnic in the open green by the architectural fountains. She always mentions the vendors on the eastern side of the plaza, and she points out that the cheese stand with the green roof was always her daughter’s favorite. For families with kids, she insists that they visit the engineering museum to the west of the library. Once every hour, there is a kid-friendly and hands-on exhibit about some of the Shepard families’ greatest inventions, and every participant has a chance to test their skill against her daughter’s favorite encryption programs.

The last group are the soldiers who served with her daughter. Hannah has gotten to know them well in her months of planning, and she greets everyone she sees by name. She walks each of them around the granite perimeter wall to the spot where their favorite memory of her daughter is engraved. She encourages them to see the rest of the plaza, but most linger. Some manage to read the entirety of the wall. All share laughter- and tear-filled stories with the strangers they encounter along the way. 

When she has clasped as many shoulders and shaken as many hands as she can stand, Hannah walks along a secluded, overgrown path behind the back of the southern wall through a tiny grove of pecan trees. She takes a seat on a bench in the center of the clearing, across from a single slab of alabaster granite. In the seclusion of the grove, her rigid shoulders finally droop. Her well worn smile smile falters.   
  
“It’s over,” she whispers out into the night. To her shock, the grove responds.   
  
“She told me once that this was her favorite place in all of Elysium,” a voice rumbles, “The pecan grove by the Old Library. ‘The only place you can get any damn quiet on the whole colony.’ I wasn’t sure if I would find it. But I knew if I came all the way out here, I had to try.”

She recognizes the voice from her daughter’s funeral, the C-SEC officer who helped chase down Saren--the first turian to serve on an Alliance ship. He is more heavily armed than she expects from an off-duty cop, and strapped across his shoulder is a bag she knows contains more than he could possibly need for a simple weekend trip to the colony. She tries not to wonder where he is headed next.

“Officer Vakarian,” she breathes, and attempts to remember all of her perfectly cultivated pleasantries. She stumbles, and she knows that the practiced levity is gone from her voice. Her polished smile has fallen. She has exhausted whatever fueled the last twelve months, and there is nothing left in reserve. “We missed you earlier,” she tries.  He does not let her finish the thought.  
  
“You did an amazing job, Captain.” He drags his luggage to the foot of the bench and takes a seat at her side. “She would have loved this.”  
  
Hannah laughs. The sound is brittle and humorless, but there is an honesty to the expression that has been missing in her life for months.  “No.” She admits, dry and reserved. “No, she would have been furious that I put her name on something so extravagant.”   
  
“Furious?” He pauses, and after a moment he turns the full intensity of his visored gaze toward her. “Well--yea, maybe. But then she’d buy an entire wheel of cheese and spend the day lost in the children’s museum, heckling people who couldn’t hack her software... And  _then_  she’d find a way to infiltrate the library after hours so that she could devour some obscure military text while the rest of the world slept. She’d forget about ‘furious’ by morning.”

”Only  _one_  wheel of cheese?” 

“You’re right. An adventure that extravagant would require at least two.” He places a gloved hand on her shoulder, a gesture of unanticipated comfort between two almost strangers. “It’s amazing. All of it.” He pauses for a breath. “But it wasn’t really for  _her_ , right?”

”No,” she admits and gestures about the grove. “And this isn’t for  _them_.”  
  
He nods and squeezes her shoulder, then he shifts his gaze back to the unadorned headstone that bears her daughter’s name. Minutes pass--maybe dozens--before she lets out the breath she thinks she must have been holding since the day the Normandy went down over Alchera.  _It’s over_  she repeats to herself,  _There’s no more work to be done._ No more souls left to soothe but her own. 

“Did she ever tell you how she found this place?” She asks, breaking the silence that has grown between them. 

“No,” he says, and his mandibles spread wide. If she squints, she thinks she can see a smile. “Is it a good story?”   
  
Despite herself, she grins. Tomorrow, she promises herself. Tomorrow she will start to pick up the pieces. She will find some other project toward which to direct her energy. She will remember how to fake a range of emotions she thinks she has long forgotten. But tonight? Tonight, she will revel in the unblemished grove that her daughter loved. Tonight--after months of listening to the tear- and laughter-filled stories of the people who loved her daughter--tonight, she thinks she will finally share some of her own. 

“They all are.” She replies. “How much time do you have?”


End file.
